A faint curve touched his mouth—half smile, half challenge. “You sure about that?”
“Positive.”
He lingered on me a second longer, his voice dropping low. “Good. Because it’s too late to run now.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but his tone shifted—gentler, resigned. “It’s just one more night, Lillian. One more performance. And then we live separate lives. You’ll get the freedom you want, and my mother can rest in peace thinking I’m happy and in love.”
His words, pointed and uncomfortable, were oddly...comforting. One more day, one final act, and then the world would return to its carefully maintained distance, the pretense we’d agreed to.
I tried to anchor myself in that thought. This was the last thing my mother would get to control. The last outfit she’d force over my head under the guise of tradition, the last meal she could criticize in front of a room full of people, the last time her opinion would have the power to make me feel like I’d failed at being a daughter, at being awoman. After today, the grip she’d had on me—on my body, my choices, my future—would finally loosen.
And yet, standing here in a dress I hadn’t chosen, corseted and choking, I felt like I was still that little girl, being dressed and presented and judged. My hands ached to tear at the fabric again, to rip free.
Khalifa’s words echoed in my head—one more day, one more performance—like a mantra, a lifeline. If I could just get through this, just keep smiling, just keep breathing, it would be over.
THE WEDDING FLEW BYin a blur after that. The only thing Khalifa and I had asked of my mother was no first dance. She’d agreed, reluctantly, and I’d felt a flicker of elation at that small victory.
By the time the last song played, the crowd of guests had thinned to murmurs and laughter, everyone funneling toward the exit, toward their cars, toward the normalcy waiting outside. My shoes clicked against the pavement, each step a reminder that the day was truly over, that we had survived, that we were—somehow—married.
My mother hugged me before I left. It was a gesture that should have been warm, intimate, a mother’s pride shining through. But instead it felt cold and performative, rather than affectionate. I held the embrace a moment longer than necessary, just to convince myself it meant something, even though I knew it didn’t.
Sarah hugged me as well, but her eyes lingered a minute too long. I held her gaze and tried to speak without moving my mouth.See me. Please see what’s actually happening. This isn’t what it looks like. I didn’t choose this the way it seems. I think I made a mistake.
I poured every unsaid confession into that look—the fake story we’d spun, the marriage that was both real and not, theparts of myself I’d had to lock away just to endure the night—and prayed she could read even a fraction of it.
But she couldn’t seem to read between the invisible lines. My lips stayed sealed in that polite smile we practiced for family photos, and when she finally released me, I let the lull stretch for one heartbeat—two—and then turned and walked to the car.
We reached his loft in silence, the glow of downtown Vancouver pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Inside, it was exactly what I should’ve predicted from him—impersonal, restrained, almost aggressively neat. The whole place stretched across one open level, all cool grays and muted blues and polished black surfaces that caught the light just enough to feel luxurious without ever feeling warm. Two bedrooms branched off the main space, a bathroom with twin sinks tucked between them, but even those seemed untouched, existing purely for architectural symmetry.
The apartment didn’t look messy. It didn’t even looklivedin. It looked...staged. Like someone had carefully arranged everything and then forgotten to add the human being.
Other than the basic furniture necessities, there was a long bookshelf organized so precisely it made my spine hurt in sympathy. Not a single plant or piece of artwork in sight. Even the large, L-shaped couch looked like it had been selected for its emotional detachment. The only thing that disrupted the pattern was a small framed photo tucked into the corner of the shelf—so unobtrusive I almost missed it entirely.
I glanced around, my voice echoing faintly in the conspicuous lack of personality. “I don’t know what I was expecting,” I said, “but it definitely wasn’t Ted Bundy’s lair. Are you allergic to color?”
Khalifa dropped my suitcases beside me. “I never felt the need to invest in turning this into a home,” he said withsurprising honesty. “It was always a...placeholder. A temporary location until my father ultimately forced me back to Lebanon.”
I paused, staring at him. He felt the same weight I’d always felt in my parents’ house—the hollow in a place that was supposed to feel like belonging. For a brief moment, the fact that he felt it too made me feel...less alone.
Then he stepped closer, his hands moving to the pins securing my hijab. My chest fluttered at the almost imperceptible brush of his fingers against my scalp.
Slowly, he eased my scarf off, revealing my hair for the first time to a man outside my family. Long waves fell down my back as he pulled the bobby pins from my bun, each strand spilling free. My stomach clenched at the sudden affection, my body buzzing with a tension I had never felt before, even in this small, innocent way.
He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing as his hands stilled. “MashAllah,” he murmured.
I wasn’t naïve. Sure, my mother might’ve skipped the scandalous wedding talk where she explained what happened after rings were exchanged and a three-layer cake was sliced, but I still knew the chain of events. I also knew Khalifa and I had agreed on a marriagewithoutbenefits, without confusion, without any of the...spicy, premium subscription features.
And yet, he was standing so close, and he was looking at me, and my knees went a little melty—which was not a sensation I’d previously associated with myself, so the clinically trained part of my brain filed a mildly concerned incident report.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t part of the deal. This was the part in the movie where the soundtrack swelled and everyone in the audience suddenly forgot about logic or paperwork or carefully set boundaries and—
I opened my mouth, a whisper escaping before my brain could slam the emergency brake. “Do you want to...?”
He scoffed, disbelief and amusement flickering across his features, because of course he knew exactly what I meant. And just like that, the delicate, heart-thudding moment cracked clean down the middle.
“Not in the slightest,” he said, moving away.
My cheeks burned, a hot mix of shame and rejection crashing over me.Fantastic. It was decided. I was officially checking myself into a facility for people who spoke first and thought never. But instead of crumpling, I shoved the humiliation down and let sarcasm rise in its place. “I was asking if you wanted to order food,” I snapped. “But now I know where your head’s at. Typical guy.”
